Blindsided
by Night Fox15
Summary: Neji thinks he knows Sasuke. At the very least, they trust each other to adhere to the unwritten terms of their sexual interludes in the forest clearing, and even if that fails, Neji trusts in his Byakugan. But, as it turns out, neither Sharingan nor Byakugan are invincible, and neither Neji or Sasuke are invulnerable. SasuNeji. Yaoi. Sexual content; rape. Set in canon.


**Warning: Sexual content, rape, yaoi.**

**SasuNeji in present tense. Started out as an attempt at writing a power-play, and evolved into something else. Notes at the end.**

**I had meant to publish this yesterday, on my birthday. Ah well.**

* * *

I.

* * *

Neji arrives in a forest clearing, immediately scanning his surroundings with his Byakugan, still activated from his journey here. The clearing is devoid of any human presence but for his own, but he doesn't deactivate the Byakugan. He is waiting for someone, someone whose arrival necessitates his being alert.

He settles into a meditational pose, sitting crosslegged on the ground. Sitting puts him at a disadvantage, but the Byakugan will ensure that he isn't taken by surprise, even despite the blind spot.

He stays like this until sunset. He hadn't been given an exact time for this meeting, but he knows that isn't why he is being kept waiting. The person he is meeting wants to demonstrate that he is more important than Neji, and indeed he will readily admit that the person is important—important in all the worst ways.

At last, a few minutes from sundown, Neji says quietly, not letting up his Byakugan, "I know you're here."

A shuriken hurtles out of nowhere, passing only centimetres from Neji's cheek. He doesn't so much as blink. "Late."

There is no reply, but Neji knows exactly where his guest is.

In his blind spot.

Slowly, calmly, Neji stands up, turning to face the other person.

He is there, exactly as Neji predicted, Sharingan not quite hiding the confusing storm of emotions in his eyes.

Sasuke.

There had never been any doubt that he would show up, just as Sasuke had doubtlessly known that Neji would wait.

He is torn, bloody, yet his expression is hostile, cold but for the window his eyes are.

Neji looks him over, eyes assessing each bump and bruise and cut and scrape. Blood flows freely from the corners of his eyes, pooling at the sides of his nose before continuing its downward path.

Sasuke's bloody tears are no new thing. He is overusing Sharingan, and with the Byakugan, Neji sees that he is going blind.

"I will not heal you."

"I don't need you to," Sasuke retorts—his first words since entering the clearing.

Neji looks at him again. He seems tired, abnormally exhausted. "What do you want, Uchiha?" It is a rhetorical question, and Sasuke knows it.

Sasuke merely looks at him, and Neji stares right back. It is a test, of patience, of determination over one's emotions and desires. A challenge.

Neither moves, as the sky darkens and the moon rises over the horizon.

Neither speaks, although Neji notes that Sasuke no longer is using Sharingan.

Finally, long after the stars have come out, Sasuke speaks. Lowly, so quietly that Neji would not have heard had he stood only a foot further away.

"You know _exactly_ what I want, _Hyuuga._"

Neji does know, and he knows that Sasuke knows it too, even before he says the words. They have played this game before.

Sasuke lifts his hands, forming seals far faster than any normal human eye could follow.

Neji stops him easily, catching his hands between movements before he can complete the first sign.

"Nice try, Uchiha."

Sasuke eyes flash, but Neji notes that he doesn't activate Sharingan again, perhaps realizing how much damage he has done to his eyes. Or, more likely, whoever he fought before coming here has taken a lot out of him.

Neji hesitates, searching Sasuke's eyes for something, something that will reveal what Sasuke has been up to.

In that moment of hesitation Sasuke breaks free of Neji's grip, turning the tables suddenly. Holding Neji's wrists in a death grip, he turns and shoves Neji back-first into a tree, pinning his arms above his head.

Sasuke leans into Neji, breath blowing across Neji's cheek and ear.

"You know _exactly_ what I want. And you're gonna give me it."

Neji frees himself, tearing his arms out of Sasuke's grip. He grabs at a fistful of Sasuke's hair, dragging his head to one side.

"No. _You_ give _me_ what I want. Or you get nothing."

Neji may still be the one pinned against the tree, but he has the upper hand. At the very least, Sasuke's loosened his grip some.

There is no verbal agreement as Neji yanks open Sasuke's rope belt. Entering the clearing is consent enough, part of their unwritten, unspoken agreement. Either is free to leave at any time. Neither ever does.

* * *

The side of Neji's face is sore, and he can feel the blood that has congealed in one of his nostrils. His ribs are sore too, and he knows that he now has quite the collection of bruises, especially considering he hadn't been in battle.

Or, rather, battle by other shinobi's standards. For every encounter with Sasuke, sexual or otherwise, was indeed a battle of sorts.

He doesn't complain though. He can't, after all. Konoha does not and will not know that he meets with Sasuke, especially not for sex, and even if that was an option, Neji was never one to complain about something that he asked for.

Not that the previous night was anything to complain about.

No one enquires as to the origins of the bruise blossoming over Neji's cheek. Apart from Naruto, that is, and Lee might too, if they were to cross paths. But Naruto wasn't expecting him to answer anyway, and it isn't a huge deal anyway among shinobi. Worse injuries were common, and his bruises don't even qualify.

But Neji chooses to stay at home, once he has restocked his kitchen. Before his interlude with Sasuke the previous night, he returned from a C-ranked mission to Sunagakure. Nothing worth noting happened, but still, Neji needs to write up a report, and he sees no point in putting it off any longer.

He finishes the report quickly—there wasn't much to say, really—and spends the remainder of the day practicing Gentle Fist. He half-expects to be summoned, either by the newly-named Hokage or by his uncle, but he hears nothing from either of them until the next day, when he brings Danzo his report.

The next day dawns with him standing outside the Hokage place, early only so that he doesn't have to deal with all the people who will be there later, not because he holds any love for the man.

He hands in his report to Danzo's assistant and is about to leave when he sees the entire Council pouring out of the council chambers. From the snatches of conversation he overhears, Danzo has proposed war on Akatsuki.

But what really catches Neji's attention is not what the Council were discussing before, but what one masked ANBU member whispers to the Hokage.

Sasuke has killed Itachi.

* * *

Despite what outsiders may have though, had they known, Neji's interludes with Sasuke gave him no further insights into Sasuke's activities than others had.

They were a release, nothing more. Nothing more given, nothing more taken. No whispered secrets or pleasantries in the heat of the moment. Neji was not Sasuke's confidant, and neither was Sasuke Neji's. They both knew that in any other situation they would be trying to kill each other.

Neji didn't really know how it started. Where it had started. When it had started. _Who_ had started it, even. But some things have always been the same, regardless.

Neji never summons Sasuke, and everything between them in that clearing never happens, never happened. They never gave insight into what they had been doing, and no questions are ever asked. Those were the unwritten, unspoken rules. They had always been the same.

Or so Neji thought, until he broke one of them.

It had been a simple mission. Two guys had kidnapped two civilian girls. They had no special abilities, and were allied with no village, and had nothing to do with Akatsuki. How could it go wrong?

But somehow it did and it had. Everything had gone wrong. Tenten was dead, and another of his team was nearly there, barely hanging onto a thread of life. They had been ambushed by a group, and Neji still had no idea who they were. The kidnapped girls had already been killed before Neji had got there, and among all that disaster, there is absolutely _nothing_ to show for it.

And he, as their leader, is responsible for the deaths. Three of them, possibly four. Two of them innocents who he had been supposed to save.

He wasn't always so affected by deaths. He shouldn't be—he is a shinobi, and he has seen death many times before. He curses inwardly Naruto and his ninja friends, who have slowly peeled away the armour he used to protect his heart with.

He cannot cry. He cannot show the emotions that have hollowed out his heart. Even he had not packed them away somewhere where they cannot reveal a weakness, he cannot allow others to see how affected he truly is.

But yet, despite having locked his despair away, he needs something, something to fill that hollow, even only for a while.

And, for the first time, he writes a message to Sasuke, containing nothing save for his initials, the same message sent to him all those times before. Nothing more needs to be said.

* * *

Sasuke keeps Neji later than usual.

It is the same clearing, the same place as always, and Sasuke keeps Neji waiting just as long as he always does, if not longer.

But this time Neji is even more alert than usual, if that is possible. He stretches Byakugan almost to its limit, casting around for Sasuke's presence when he arrives.

He sees nothing. Nothing at all until it is too late.

Before he can do anything, when he finally does see him, the tip of a kunai is pressing into his throat. The hand holding it there is steady, unwavering, more dangerous than an unsteady hand. A trembling hand shows a lack of conviction, that the holder does not truly want to kill. Sasuke shows none of that.

The kunai is placed perfectly—not even Neji, with his Byakugan and knowledge of chakra points and nerve endings, could have positioned it better. He knows better than to struggle.

In the tense silence, broken not by Neji but by an awkward croak of birdsong, Sasuke speaks. Softly, menacingly. "You think you are important enough that I will come when you summon. Like you come to me." His words are icy, and Neji doesn't know whether they are a question or a statement.

So Neji says nothing, keeping Sasuke firmly fixed in his sight. He can see Sasuke's Sharingan. Not Mangekyo—his eyes are damaged far too badly for that—but the three red tomoe revolving slowly around each pupil are threat enough.

Neji cannot take off the Byakugan now, even though his eyes are beginning to tire.

A wet droplet splashes onto Neji's shoulder. A tear, not of salty water, but of blood.

"I am not equal to you, Neji." Sasuke's voice turns hard, even colder than Neji has ever heard him, although he is speaking no louder than he was before. "_You are not my equal._"

Neji thought that he had seen more of Sasuke's better side than most people, save perhaps for Naruto, the side not driven by revenge. Maybe he had. And maybe because of that Neji had forgotten how dangerous Sasuke was.

Now, however, Neji knows. Now, perhaps, he sees how Sasuke's victims feel. And he knows that he won't make that same mistake again. For now, the one definite thing is the emotion paralyzing him, leaving him hyperaware of his own defencelessness: fear. _Fear_.

"Do you know what I have done, Hyuuga? _Do you know_?" The blunt edge of the kunai digs deeper into Neji's neck; and as he tries to swallow, his Adam's apple bumping up against the knife, the tip shifts and presses into his throat, releasing a tiny droplet of blood.

"Your hokage is dead. _Dead._" His voice climbs, from soft and threatening to an almost hysterical pitch. "_I_ killed him; I killed your pathetic excuse for Hokage. _I_ killed him, like I killed Itachi. You know nothing. _Nothing._ I kill my brother, and you come running when summoned. I kill your hokage and you dare summon me. Both times, for what? All for sex. You're pathetic. _Pathetic_! And you never know, do you? And even when you do know, you come running straight back to me all the same."

The kunai jerks up, barely a hair's breadth, but Neji feels it acutely, as if his entire world is focused on the knife at his throat and Sasuke behind him.

Sasuke pauses, catching himself. "So yes. I will fuck you, if that is what you want. _Regardless_ of whether you want it. Because, remember, coming here tells me that you want it." Sasuke shifts behind him and Neji feels Sasuke's hard length pressing into his backside. This time, unlike all their other encounters, the feeling is not accompanied by arousal, only dreading anticipation of what he knows will happen next.

Neji pulls himself together and shoves Sasuke away roughly. He looks surprised for a second, and in that second Neji whirls around, avoiding the blade by the width of a hair, channeling chakra into his hands as he does. His right fist lands solidly into Sasuke's stomach, knuckles barely missing the tenketsu point there. The hair's breadth he had avoided the knife by costs him that crucial blow, and he doesn't get another: Sasuke blocks his other fist and rams him against a tree, taking advantage of the fact that Neji's attack unbalanced him. Neji puts his hands out behind to catch himself and the hard rough bark slices his palms.

Sasuke turns him around, shoving the kunai back at his throat and snarling when Neji resists. He shoves him against the tree so Neji has no choice but to grasp the tree's rough bark for balance, and forces him over, bent almost in two.

Finally, for the last humiliation, Sasuke spreads Neji's ass cheeks one-handedly and thrusts in, all in one movement. Neji bites through the inside of his cheek as he feels his asshole tearing open. In the haze of pain filling him, there is no pleasure.

Neji tries to block it out; after all, no shinobi should succumb to pain so easily, but he can feel it, every bit of it, enhanced by the knowledge that _this should not be happening_. It's not just his pride as a Hyuuga, but as a shinobi, as a person. _How was this happening to him_? How was he in this position, this position to do _absolutely nothing_ as Sasuke did what he wanted behind him?

He cannot turn off the Byakugan. He can feel his energy, his chakra reserves ebbing as Sasuke takes something from him with every unheeding thrust. Somehow, he sees everything Sasuke does, yet he can do nothing.

The knife jerks upwards into Neji's throat. He doesn't know whether it is intentional or not, and it really makes no difference. It slices the skin at his neck, under his chin, and he feels a sharp sting. He tries to focus on this cool, cutting pain through the blinding fog of his violation he is losing himself in, his last attempt to hold himself together.

By the time he sees the dark, steady trickle of blood from the cut in his neck, he is barely holding onto consciousness.

Sasuke pulls out, and Neji closes his eyes, almost whimpering. He cannot take any more. But Sasuke is finished with him, and lets him go. Neji crumples to the ground, no strength left to hold him up any longer. Something lands with a muffled thud against his ear—the same knife he was held by, given to him, a final insult.

How did it turn so wrong?

* * *

It is Naruto that finds him in the clearing. Sasuke, of course, is long gone by that time, leaving Neji lying for dead in a patch of bloodied grass, so far gone only his unconscious was clinging to life. Somehow, Neji senses that Naruto seems to know who it was, as he is draped unceremoniously over his shoulders.

Neji gives no sign that he is aware of what is going on around him, as Naruto brings him back to Konoha.

Neji hadn't seen it coming. Hyuuga Neji, whose Byakugan saw it all, with the closest to a 360 degree vision as any Hyuuga had ever achieved, had never seen it coming.

Naruto cannot heal him, but Hinata can. Neji hides his shame by continuing his faked unconsciousness as his cousin tends to him. If she notices anything, she doesn't say so.

Like the rules of his and Sasuke's dangerous game, it never happened.

* * *

II.

* * *

Neji has hunted Sasuke for months. He is uncaring where he gets his information from, so long as it helps him somehow to find Sasuke.

But only now has Neji been able to lure Sasuke back into the clearing he desecrated. And, he knows, only because there is something that Sasuke wants.

He's not going to get it. Not this time.

Neji's Byakugan is not activated. He knows Sasuke well enough that he knows where he is, where he will be without it. Every time, without fail, Sasuke enters in Neji's blind spot. Every time, Neji had been blinded to this, too stupid or naïve to notice this consistency. He's the only one who has managed it, despite Neji having the most advanced Byakugan of his clan. This time, however, Neji has opened his eyes to this trick of Sasuke's.

He places his hands together, only the fingers of each hand joining, pressing against their counterparts on the other hand. He channels chakra into his fingertips, head bowed in concentration, concentration that will not be broken.

Faster than lightning, Neji whirls around, dancing the first steps of his Gentle Fist. The fingers of his right hand, rigid as a board, connect with the tenketsu point in Sasuke's neck. Sasuke crumples, temporarily frozen, as a surprised expression creeps onto his face.

Still in the same, near-meditative state as before, Neji reaches into a pouch and pulls out a kunai. Standard-issue, it is almost exactly the same knife that Sasuke had used on him the last time they'd met.

But this time it is Neji holding the cards, and it is Neji that backs Sasuke up into a tree—not the same one as before, but close enough—knife at his throat.

Sasuke speaks, in an antagonisingly calm voice. "What are you going to do to me, Hyuuga? The same I did to you?"

Neji will not do what Sasuke did to him. He will not sink so low, and while he wants very much to hurt Sasuke, he will not do so like that. Sasuke seems to know this.

But for all that he knows he will not do, he realizes that he does not know precisely what he will do.

Sasuke, sensing this indecisiveness, arches up slightly, disregarding the knife at his throat, and captures Neji's lips with his own, as if their last encounter had never happened.

Neji is thrown off by this. Never, in all of their many encounters, had they kissed.

He is distracted for less than a second, but it is enough for Sasuke to activate his Sharingan. Before Neji notices, Sasuke has freed himself from Neji's hold.

"_Neji_." Neji doesn't know if he's ever heard Sasuke use his given name, at least not since his defection from Konoha. But now he's calling it out, the syllables bouncing around the clearing mockingly, making it impossible for Neji to pinpoint where he is when the sound should have been a giveaway.

"Did you enjoy it, Neji? You must have; you chased me down for more, didn't you?" And his voice, while mocking, is completely serious. Neji has no doubts that given half a chance, Sasuke will indeed do it again.

And that spurns him forward, blindly pinpointing Sasuke's position, freeing himself of the weak genjutsu that had previously disoriented him.

Sasuke makes a sick _gluck_ noise, and Neji lets him drop. The kunai is buried in his stomach, positioned to kill, not right away, but in a process that will take hours as his insides mutiny, slowly killing him from the inside out.

Sasuke looks at him, an unreadable expression in his eyes. He tries to sit up, but Neji pulls the knife out. There is a funny smell and Sasuke goes absolutely white.

Without wiping the knife off, he tosses it next to Sasuke, just out of his reach, though he knows that the injury will leave Sasuke in no state to use it, even if he could reach it.

He can feel Sasuke's eyes boring holes in him as he leaves the clearing but he doesn't look back, or indeed, even look around with the Byakugan.

He feels no satisfaction. Somehow, he knows that there is a good chance that Sasuke will make it out of this alive, but he has done what he had to.

As Neji hadn't seen it coming, neither had Sasuke.

Both blind.

Blindsided.

* * *

**A/N: I had a certain degree of trouble with this fic. What started out as an attempt at writing a power-play fic for a friend evolved into a rape scene, which I found very unpleasant to write. Because of this, and because of the troubles I had writing this in present tense, a tense alien for me to write in, I was unsure for a long while as to whether I should show this to anyone, let alone publish it.**

**The original concept of this story evolved from two things: a friend on Gaia's request for a power-play (which I still haven't honoured, sorry), and a conversation with a SasuNaru writer, R+F, about Neji being "blindsided" despite his Byakugan, a concept that I found interesting because I could show that even a character who saw almost everything could miss something so important. I will probably try and work with both ideas again in future, with different characters or the same, I don't know, but both (more the latter than the former for me) have the potential to be worked so many different ways and I'd like to experiment with them.**

**Also, the uploader fucked up some of my formatting, particularly scene breaks. If there are any you think I missed please let me know, and also if there are any unsavoury breaks out of present tense.**


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